Once we reached Lincoln Air Park, we swapped from our all-season driving rubber to those meaty Toyos and headed to the course. Howard Duncan, SCCA’s vice president of competition programs development, met us there amid his duties at the event.
Our test course had shown that while the traction control was not fully defeatable, it wasn’t intrusive enough to be a problem. It was a different story on the concrete. We could get the tail out happily with a bit of trail-braking, but then the computer immediately cut power. We needed a better solution.
We talked to Andy Hollis, who was running his Mazda 2 in the same class. He had found that pulling the fuse for the stability control system did the trick. We studied our underhood fuse panel and found the right one to pull. Having that system disconnected illuminated several lights in the instrument cluster, but hey, we were in control of our car again! We could lay on the power and toss the car aggressively with no nannies to niggle with us.
Alas, it wasn’t enough. The B-Spec front springs are a bit too soft for autocross use: The front tires were bouncing because we bottomed on the bump stops. Our competitors came in well-prepared, uncompromised cars and we were there in something of a half-measure—a detour on our way to a road race. Howard placed seventh out of the 10 entrants in the class.
We headed home disappointed that we hadn’t done better, but it’s not all rain showers smearing our goth makeup. We had a date to the big dance, and Nationals is always a fun time with a good group of people.
Now that it’s back home, we’ll put the Fiesta back into B-Spec setup and start stripping the interior for its roll cage. Watch for regular updates at grassrootsmotorsports.com
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